Shang-A-Lang

Sunday. Snoozed and snacked and snoozed and snacked, lying downstairs on the sofa from Countryfile to dusk and now I'm at a bit of a loose end. It has been grabbed hangover food, unfortunately – a Ginster’s pasty with ketchup, cereal, smoked cheese slices and a bit of leftover quiche. I’ve finished the novel I was reading, read the papers (except for the bits which come with the NOTW which never get taken out of the plastic and the Culture section of the ST which I fall asleep reading in bed on a Sunday night) and I don’t want a bath just yet. Little miracle Fints did the housework while I was out at the Tower Of London yesterday so that doesn’t need doing. Shame is over, Michelle’s wedding is over, The Project is over – for the first time in months there is no reason for me to be upstairs organising music. Fints is watching sport, alternating between Wimbledon and a football match (I thought that was the end of it last Sunday but, then, football never ever finishes, does it?) and it’s too early to put on the new Futurama movie… So here I am, mucking about.

It wasn’t football. It was the tennis still going on. Rowdy-sounding because it’s the final, says Fints.

Aunty Janet. Hang on, I don’t use the ‘Aunty’ bit when I actually address her, or Aunties Alice and Irene, or Uncles, for that matter: my mum always said she thought it was ‘prissy’ - aunty this, uncle that - so we weren’t brought up that way. Anyway, Jan had these free passes from the woman upstairs - The Tower Of London / discount at the restaurant there / Tower Bridge / boat to Greenwich, all in, so it was arranged I’d meet her and her mate Wendy and mum and dad, outside Tower Hill tube yesterday morning. Overcast at first but sunny by the time we’d circumnavigated the entire attraction about three times in order to find the right entrance for these passes.

I can’t have been there since I was ten years old and I’d forgotten it’s not one thing, but a collection of different buildings – towers, arsenals, wall walks, gates, battlements, chapels, grace and favour cottages, an infirmary, all arranged about the execution green in the centre. It's nice - laid-back and village-y. Me and mum were amazed you could smoke in there.

I found it interesting. Standing in the poky, dank Salt Tower, you really did get an impression of how it would have felt to have been locked up there, overlooking the Thames, with just the meanest slits of windows for light and fresh air. Black wood execution block, worn smooth and shiny with use and riven with great gouges was fascinatingly repulsive. Saw the Royal bling, of course, which was all a bit zzzz except for the most OTT ginormous solid gold punchbowl which seemed to me the kind of thing Michael Jackson would own. Not massively interested either in the rows and rows of weaponry – you’ve seen one pike, you’ve seen ‘em all – but I loved the armour, especially the horse armour. Beautiful.

Of course we just had to run into some ‘living theatre’ thing, didn’t we? It’s everywhere these days this stuff, providing employment for actors on their uppers, and ‘bringing history to life’ for the masses. Here was Lady Nithsdale, in all her Jacobean finery, standing between the gift shop and the women’s toilets: “Oh dear me o good people, gather round gather round and listen to my tale, my Lord and husband the Earl Of Nithsdale is to be executed tomorrow morning at dawn and I have only my trusty servant Master Meakins with me, oh what am I to do, I entreat and implore you to help me set him free and make our escape to Rome etc., etc., ”

Going straight into teenager mode, I was thinking as I reluctantly, sheepishly shuffled forward, ”Please mum please mum please mum don’t shout out or join in” but it was too late. Before I knew it there was mum right down the front, shouting out and joining in. Marked at this early stage of the re-enactment as a game one, mum ended up being roped in to the show, helping bring history to life by, on instruction, winking seductively at the gaoler and nipping in and out of the Earl's cell wearing a servant's hooded cloak etc., Meanwhile Janet and Wendy stood at the front, holding her handbag and cheering her on while dad and I stood well back, smiling through gritted teeth.

It was a true story. Lord Nithsdale’s escape really did happen via this disguise method and he and Lady Nithsdale went on to live happily ever after under the protection of the Catholic Church in Rome. However – and I think this is really odd and really a bit off – what the living theatre actors neglected to tell us was that was all a waste of time, because King George had in fact already reprieved the Earl, an act of great mercy and generosity towards an enemy who had, after all, rallied around James Stuart’s (The Old Pretender) claim to his throne. I looked it up when I got home and it is one of the main facts of the story. And yet by completely oversimplifying events, in order presumably to make pantomime good guys out of the Catholic Nithsdales and bad guys out of the Protestant King, history wasn’t brought to life at all, was it? A waste of time, all this winking and gurning and imploring and costume-changing if people don’t go away actually educated. And you’d expect that from Hollywood, not the Tower Of bloomin’ London. A good day out nevertheless.

Didn’t do the boat trip because we hung around too long and I wanted to get home and have a kip before Gay Shame. I walked through the City to London Bridge and found myself at times quite alone down by the River, which was fantastic. I must start river walking again. And Shame’s theme this year was Masculinity and I did have a (stupid, I suppose) idea quite early on for the Wifes to wear armour, figuring you must be able to hire stuff like that that doesn’t weigh a ton. Too impractical, said Jelly, and he was right, so we did it as builders in hard hats with orange tan and fluorescent waistcoats and arsecrack jeans. They’d put us on a scaffolding high up overlooking the dance floor, reached by a rickety ladder, and oh my the view was astonishing from up there. Robin Whitmore had done a terrific job with the venue. Around the dance floor was a collection of rickety, deliberately down-at-heel booths – pit-stops, tattoo parlours, gay zombie sauna parlour, seedy DIY shops etc., - within which the 100 or so performers and artists peddled their masculinity wares. Outside in the lane alongside The Coronet there was even a mini-village of rockin’ fried food stalls and installations. It was like Glastonbury or something. Somebody was doing flesh coloured lollies cast from a massive dildo. The Bears did dance routines to Macho Man and Smack My Bitch Up and Justin sang and it’s been too long since I’ve seen him and Rufus Wainwright was there but I didn’t see him. Simon had done such an amazing job again - so in this respect I really did feel a welling up of Gay-Proud on Gay Pride - and it was packed. It was still packed in fact when we left the crowd to Lush and zoomed home in our Addison Lee at 3-ish because I am phobic these days about being the last to leave anything i go to. I don’t know why but I think about my exit strategy way before, for example, what I'm going to wear.